Tim Burton's Christmas chaos: abject transgression in Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands

Tim Burton's Christmas trilogy, Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands are all characterized by his trademark features. These include characters with ambiguous identities, apparently “normal” worlds adjacent to spaces associated with difference and exclusion, and the inevitable intrusion of the latter into the former. Alongside this, the three films display distinct elements of bodily disgust and decay, corresponding to Julia Kristeva's notion of the abject. Together, these aspects resonate with concepts of abjection as relevant to incoherent identities, differentiated spaces and corporeality. In particular, there are scenes where parental figures attempt to steer their surrogate ‘children’ towards socially acceptable behavior and adulthood, also a key component of Kristeva's theory. Utilizing textual analysis of the films' key scenes and respective narrative trajectories, this article therefore argues that Burton's Christmas films are especially susceptible to Kristevan analysis through their qualities of abject space, parental influence and incoherent identity, as well as their elements of bodily disgust and boundary transgression.

Citation

Pheasant-Kelly, F. (2025) Tim Burton's Christmas chaos: abject transgression in Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Edward Scissorhands. The Journal of American Culture, 48 (4), pp. 184-190. https://doi.org/10.1111/jacc.70042.

Type

Journal article

Language

en

Description

This is an author's accepted manuscript of an article published in The Journal of American Culture on 26 November 2025, available online at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jacc.70042. The accepted manuscript may differ from the final published version.

ISSN

1542-7331

EISSN

1542-734X

Collections

Faculty of Arts, Business and Social Sciences